Chronicles of the Long Shot Farm

We had no idea how much better home made pasta really is – though others had told us to try it for a while. Ever since Sammy got a pasta attachment, we’ve been “borrowing” it, and experimenting with various noodles.  So far we made several batches of spaghetti and linguine, but also made some lasagna noodles and raviolis.   We used some of our frozen pesto and added it to one of the noodle batches, which turned out great.

Seems that the trick to making perfect noodles is a rather dry dough.  Our ratios vary from 3 cups of flour to 4 eggs, to 3.5 cups of flour to 5 eggs.  Then we add a bit of salt, and either a small amount of water of olive oil – depending on the consistency of the dough.  Have not messed up a batch yet, so there seems to be some flexibility :).

Definintely can’t beat a meal of homemade spaghetti, with homemade pasta sauce and homemade wine! And if we made too much pasta, we can store it for a bit and use it later.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cup butter at room temperature, cut into smaller pieces
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 3 cups flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 cup sour cream   (sometimes I use 1/2 cup yogurt and 1 cup sour cream)
• Filling (see below)
• Glaze (see below)

Here is a  recipe for some incredibly good, soft and cake-like pumpkin cookies with caramel icing, courtesy of my friend Robin:

Robin’s Pumpkin Cookies

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup pumpkin puree
• 1 egg (beaten)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 1 cup chopped raisins

Cream sugar and butter, stir in pumpkin, egg and vanilla.  Sift remaining dry ingredients and add to batter.  Stir in nuts and raisins.
Drop by heaped teaspoon onto cookie sheet and bake at 350 degree F for about 12 minutes.  Let cook and then spread icing (below) onto cookies.

Caramel Icing:

• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 cup of milk
• 1 cup (or more) of powdered sugar

Combine butter, milk and brown sugar in a small pot and bring to a full, rolling boil (the kind that cannot be stirred down).  Boils for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.  Cool and then add vanilla and powdered sugar – beat until smooth (an immersion blender works great for this)

Happy Election Day 2012!  Here is one of my favorite comfort foods: creamy, old fashioned  Rice Pudding.  Unfortunately, as with so many of my favorite foods, I am the only one with cravings for rice pudding in my entire household.  But I indulged today, to ease election jitters.

Old Fashioned Rice Pudding

Ingredients:

• 6 cups milk (the higher the fat content, the better – I used 2%, as that is what we had)
• 1 cup short to medium grain white rice  (I usually use River Rice)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons butter 
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 tablespoons sugar (more or less to taste)

Using a double boiler, place water in the bottom pan, and pour the milk into the insert.  Add the rice and salt and bring water to a boil.  Turn down heat to maintain a light boil, and steam the rice this way for at least 1 hour – until all milk is absorbed and rice is very soft.  Stir rice frequently!   Sometimes it takes up to 1 hour and 15 minutes or so.  Also, make sure that the water in the bottom does not boil off.  When the rice is done, add the butter, vanilla and sugar and mix well.

Enjoy the pudding warm with some sugar and cinnamon, or cold with some fruit compote. The rice can be reheated in the microwave, by adding a little milk (or cream) before heating it for about 1 minute for one serving.

A long time ago, Jeff asked an old farmer’s wife how to make chicken corn soup.  She looked at him as if he was daft, and then told him to cook chicken with corn – duh.  Jeff  has expanded on those basic ingredients and over the years learned to make pretty decent soup.  Last week, his own mother asked him for his chicken corn soup recipe, so I thought it may be time to write it down for everyone:

Ingredients:

• 20 lbs chicken pieces (we use thighs and breasts)
• 4 lbs onions
• 1 bag celery
• 1/2 stick of butter (or 1/4 cup vegetable oil)
• 1 Tablespoon ground pepper
• 1/4 cup of salt
• 1/4 cup of chicken bouillon powder
• 3 gallon bags of frozen corn
• additional seasoning to taste

Using a 22 quart pressure cooker – with the drain tray for jars placed in the bottom – add the 20 lbs of meat and 1 gallon water (the drain plate prevents the meat from burning).  Cook the chicken at 10 pounds of pressure for 20 minutes.  This pretty much “destroys” the meat.

Pour meat through colander, catching the broth in a bowl.  Pour all the broth back into the pot.  Let the meat cool enough to handle, then debone it and add it back to the pot.

Coarsely chop the onions and celery and simmer in a separate large pot, with some butter or oil (just enough to get the onions started to make juice, about 1/4 cup or so).  Simmer for 20 minutes, until soft.  Optional:  we use our salsa screen for the food mill and run the onion/celery mixture through this, which removed all the strings from the celery, and leaves “no chunks”.  The onion/celery mixture makes another gallon of creamy liquid, which we add to the broth.  For “chunky” soup, the food mill step can be skipped, just add the mixture to the broth.

Add pepper, salt and bouillon.  At this point, the pot will be less than half full.  Add the corn until the kernels are level with the liquid.  Bring back to a full boil.

We then let the soup sit several hours (actually over night).  By the next morning, the corn will have soaked up all the liquid.  Add more water to again just cover the corn.  Reheat the soup, adjust seasoning (with pepper, salt and bouillon powder) and simmer for several hours.  (We simmer it all day and serve it in the evening.)

We freeze left-overs in 1 gallon containers